


Second Date

by Jessi_Knight



Series: Moments [3]
Category: The Fosters (TV 2013)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 22:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7074025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessi_Knight/pseuds/Jessi_Knight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stef's second date with Lena (takes place years before the show starts).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Date

Tuesday, June 11th, 2002  
Anchor Beach Community Charter School

\-------

The waves were a soft, steady soundtrack as Stef Foster looked out over the ocean. There were the obligatory sounds of civilization in the background as well, indistinct and long familiar. Her eyes were on the far horizon where the sky met the ocean.

"What am I doing?" She asked herself so softly no one would have been able to hear unless they'd been standing next to her. No one was occupying that particular position at the moment... but, somewhat presumably, someone would again, soon.

It was still a little surreal to her, not that she wanted to admit that to anyone in particular besides herself. It wasn't a bad surreal... a remembered flash of Lena Adams's smile crossed the landscape of her memory and she couldn't help a small, completely genuine smile coming to her own lips in response.

No, not bad at all. Really... really wonderful, actually. But also... scary as hell sometimes, when she really thought about it. Another thing she wasn't about to say out loud... to anyone.

Behind her was a school, the one she'd just recently enrolled her five year old son in. The one where Lena worked as the vice-principal... they'd met in the parking lot where her car was right now. They'd met, Lena had smiled to her, and... whether she'd realized it fully at that moment or not, everything had changed... or, it felt like that now anyway, even though she knew, objectively, much of her life was the same now as it had been before that day, before that smile. But it still _felt_ changed.

Less than a week after that smile, she'd told her husband Mike that they were done and that they had to get a divorce. The very next day, she'd asked Lena Adams out on a formal date. Her heart had been racing a mile a minute, and the _second_ the words had left her lips she'd instantly wished she could take them back, certain somehow that she'd made a fool of herself.

Lena had smiled and said yes though, and that 'yes' had made her feel better about everything, about life as a whole, than she'd felt in... she didn't know how long.

Their first date had been awkward and fun and romantic. Flawed, but that kind of flawed that somehow also managed to be better than perfect ever could be. Or, at least that's how she remembered it. It might just be because she was... well, probably in love with this woman. They'd known each other nowhere near long enough for her to have any business thinking something like that, let alone saying it, but there it was. Oh, she wasn't _going_ to say it, to admit to it, at least not until they had a lot more than one measly quirky first date under their belts.

In that week before she'd worked up the courage to take that last step and tell Mike she wanted a divorce, she'd read all kinds of literature on this subject - maybe too much. She'd read enough to know, even more than she'd known previously, that she was lucky to have been born in a time where there _was_ literature like this to read, but she'd also read enough to know that getting her hopes up as high as she, admittedly, already had, was a damn stupid thing to do.

She'd gotten dangerously close to kissing a fellow cadet at the academy once - a woman, Lindsey Donovan - after they'd both had a little too much to drink one night. Apparently that was a cliché. The point was, that's all she had to her name as far as previous lesbian 'cred' - or, in other words, Lena was her first. The books all said that's how she needed to handle this, treating this like Lena was her first. Because of that, the books told her not to expect too much. First loves were so rarely last loves, after all.

It seemed defeatist to actually believe that though, so she figured she'd just have to try her best, _hope_ for the best, and take her lumps if the books prophecies came to past anyway and she ended up failing miserably at this.

In the background, a bell rang. School was out. She turned away from the ocean and looked back towards the school. Tonight was their second date. Brandon, her son, was with his father, Mike, tonight. Mike was going to be the one picking him up. She thought about that. The divorce was still ongoing. Until then, they'd agreed to switch days, like a shift. She didn't like it. But there it was.

She took out her cell phone and dialed Mike. He picked up on the second ring.

"Hi Stef." Mike's voice came over the phone, sounding a little weary, but like he was trying to hide it. "I'm in the school parking lot, if that's what you're calling about. Got here early, okay?"

"Okay. Mike..." She trailed off, her eyes looking blankly off towards the school where the students were filing out of their classrooms. None were in her vicinity yet, as she'd been waiting by the administration building where Lena had her office.

"What?" Mike asked.

"Nothing. Sorry. I'll let you go." She told him, having exactly zero clue what else she could possibly say at the moment. She could say that she'd _had_ to call because she was a mother, but that, or pretty much anything else approaching honesty would have implied that she didn't really trust him to be a responsible enough father to where she'd feel comfortable _not_ checking up on him where their son was concerned. And it would be implied because it was true that she _did_ think that. It just wouldn't be smart to say it. She knew his triggers - what would make him want a drink - all too well by now. She didn't like knowing those things so well, but she did know them. She supposed she was actually lucky that Mike wasn't a mean drunk at all (in her line of work, she knew that for a fact, actually). But it had gotten hard to think of anything besides Brandon as having been all that lucky in her marriage. And that wasn't all Mike's fault by any means, it was obvious it wasn't.

"Okay... Stef?" Mike asked.

"Yes?" Stef replied, hoping he wasn't going to say something reconciliatory again. It always made her feel guilty when he said those 'we can still work this out' type of things... She tried not to feel that way, because she knew it wasn't helpful or even fair to herself, but that was something under the heading of 'easier said than done'. She'd been a lesbian in a heterosexual relationship. That she hadn't started out intending to deceive anyone, even herself, was all true. It didn't change the results though, it just didn't. But what was done was done, and all she could do was move forward.

"Can we... Can we maybe get together and talk later? Maybe after B's gone to bed for the day?" Mike asked.

"Mike, I... have a date... tonight." Stef told him, feeling like she'd been caught a bit flat footed - which was, traditionally, not a good thing for a cop.

"Oh... well, okay, I, uh... maybe tomorrow then?" He offered, sounding a bit like he'd been sucker-punched. Great.

"I um, sure. Lunch?" She offered. 'Be civil', her lawyer had said. Also said not to talk to him except about parenting Brandon, but she knew that not giving Mike a chance to be heard out would hurt his feelings and make the staying civil part harder. So... a nice, quick lunch at a food cart tomorrow would probably be the smartest thing. She wanted to get through this. She wanted as clean a break as she could manage with him. And she knew him well enough by now to know that, a lot of the time, Mike was the kind of person you just needed to explain things to more than once, and give him more than one opportunity to feel heard, before it really would sink in for him. She... supposed she actually did owe that to him.

"That, sure. Lunch would work. I'll, uh, I'll call you." He told her.

"Sounds good." Stef replied.

"Good. Bye then, I guess." Mike replied.

"Bye Mike." She told him quietly.

He hung up and she put away her phone and looked over at the building, debating with herself whether to go in or wait a little while longer for Lena to finish up work for the day.

She stood there a while longer, absently watching students and staff come and go, not really thinking about anything at all.

At one point, her thoughts came back into focus again and she made the decision to walk forward towards the building where her date for the evening was. As she got to the door, someone came out and she stepped to the side, catching the door with her hand and going in.

She walked down the hallway. There were people talking, she could hear them indistinctly in the offices, but, for the moment, the hallway was deserted but for her. She walked down towards Lena's office and heard her talking with someone. The voice was female, young too. So, a student.

She was going to just wait in the hall until the conversation was over, keeping a respectful distance so she wouldn't overhear, but as she leaned against the wall to wait, the conversation apparently ended and the teenage girl Lena had been talking with exited the office.

She was... pink. Really pink. Her clothes were anyway. She was distracted and glum looking though, and Stef wasn't entirely sure if the girl noticed she was there or not. Stef shook her head once and decided it wasn't her business and went over to Lena's half-open door, knocking on it and offering the woman inside a smile when her head angled up and their eyes met. "He there." Stef offered, suddenly feeling a little like an awkward teenage girl herself, though she was stubbornly determined not to let that show.

"Hi!" Lena replied, putting down some papers she was holding and standing up. "Come in, sorry, were you waiting long?" She asked.

Stef accepted the invitation, entering the office. She shook her head. "Not long at all." She replied as Lena came over around the desk and met her eyes again. Everything seemed to kind of stop for both of them then and Stef thought 'to hell with it' and moved in to kiss her.

She held off a beat to make sure Lena was receptive, and then their lips met and it was great. Even better than last time, when they'd said goodnight the day before yesterday. And after that previous kiss she'd been wanting another one to the point of distraction. She closed her eyes, one hand on Lena's chin, the other at her hip, Lena's hands holding her in return, they just sort of made out for how long exactly Stef wasn't sure, but she was feeling a little lightheaded when they stopped.

She wasn't sure who'd stopped first, her or Lena. "Sorry, was that alright for me to do?" Stef asked. "Not too forwards?"

"Definitely not." Lena told her, running a hand through Stef's hair a little, looking into her eyes. There were intentions in those eyes, Stef was somehow sure of it. That made her feel a lot better, because she knew she had intentions too. Maybe that was stupid and cliché like all the books said, but she couldn't help from it anyway.

"That's good to know." Stef told her. "So, are you done for the day? I can just hang out a while more if you need to finish up a few things?" She offered.

"No, I just need to return this file and close down my PC for the day, that's all. Only take a minute or so." She said, turning around to do those things.

"No problem, take your time." Stef replied, putting her hands behind her back and leaning against the wall by the door. Why was she a leaning against walls kind of person all of the sudden? She wasn't usually. Huh.

A few moments later, she and Lena were heading out of the staff building and out towards the water. They planned on taking a walk on the beach down to a nearby restaurant. It was a good half-hour's walk each way, Lena had told her, which suited her fine. It was a beautiful day out and she loved walking on the beach, especially so in this case, obviously...

"So, how's your afternoon been going so far?" Lena asked her. "Any exciting police business since we talked last?" They'd checked in by phone at lunch to make sure there weren't any snags in their evening plans.

Stef laughed. "Well, I guess that depends on your definition of 'exciting' - does a grown man in a lobster costume trying to beat a Honda Civic to death with a foam board sign advertising a happy hour special at the Lobster Shack count?" She'd actually stopped and gawked a few seconds - caught speechless - when she'd seen it.

"...I'd say that counts, yeah." Lena replied, starting to giggle. "That really happened?"

"Oh yes. You think I could make something like that up?" Stef replied, smiling and feeling very light-hearted about everything all of the sudden as they walked down to the beach. The lobster man thing hadn't seemed nearly this funny when it was happening, or after, not until she told it to Lena. That said a lot, didn't it?

"I guess not." Lena replied. "Why exactly did the lobster have it out of the Honda, by the way?"

Stef shook her head and sighed. "From what I can put together, the man in the Honda's passenger seat had been heckling the guy in the lobster outfit, apparently because he and the lobster had a history of some kind, dating back to elementary school I'm given to understand. The exchange became heated, the man threw his coffee on the lobster and..."

"The lobster went postal?" Lena asked, struggling not to laugh at the lobster's expense anymore, which Stef found endearing.

"You said it, not me." Stef replied. "It um, did end up degenerating into a fist fight at some point." Well, half fist fight, half foam claw fight she supposed, but she wasn't going to say it.

"Was anyone hurt?" Lena asked.

"They roughed each other up a bit, yes. When Jim and I came on the scene though, the sirens seemed to take the fight out of them... they both seemed more embarrassed than anything, actually. The guy in the civic was a paralegal, it turns out." Stef informed her.

Lena laughed. "You live an interesting life, Stefanie Foster, I'll give you that."

"Well, sometimes. Coming upon a brawling lobster is, one would hope, a once in a carrier sort of thing to happen." Stef replied.

"One would hope." Lena replied.

"Oh, come on, are you going to tell me you don't have stories like that? You work at a school." Stef countered. "Young humans are, I'm informed by several credible sources, quite a handful at times."

Lena giggled a little again. "I might have a few stories." Lena replied.

"Tell me one?" Stef asked.

"Alright, well... a certain sixth grade girl, who shall remain nameless, did show up on picture day dressed like Minnie Mouse a couple years ago. She blatantly refused to be photographed without her makeup and mouse ears."

Stef was laughing.

"Her parents were called, a group of her friends started protesting that her rights were being violated. It was quite a memorable day, actually." Lena finished.

Stef wanted to say something witty back, but she was laughing too much.

This was definitely going to be a fun date.

\--------

end

and leave a comment if you want, I'd love to hear from you


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